The main thrust of the investigation will be the relationship between food intake regulation and the status of the nutrient reserves; namely adipose tissue triglyceride, liver glycogen and "labile" protein. Various animal models and experimental situations will be employed to probe this relationship in depth; for example, the effect of odd-carbon enrichment of depot fat on hunger drive and satiability will be studied in the food-deprived rat. The effect of other manipulations of metabolic status on food related behavior in rodents will be studied; these include treatment with 2-deoxy-(-)-hydroxycitrate, cholecystokinin, glucagon and other metabolically active agents. In this way it is hoped to learn more about the interaction of nutritional and metabolic status and the responsiveness of satiety receptors to putative satiety stimuli. We are also studying the development of obesity in mice with hereditary obese syndromes to characterize the feeding paaterns by which they develop, maintain and defend their obese body weight and are planning studies designed to intervene in the developmental sequence to prevent or correct for obesity.